00:00At least five boats are now currently either in scheduled maintenance or getting urgent
00:10repairs.
00:11Australia operates a fleet of six Collins-class submarines.
00:15They began being commissioned back in the mid-90s, 1996 in fact, so these are ageing
00:22platforms.
00:23Earlier this year we heard that there were unprecedented corrosion problems on some of
00:29those very old submarine hulls, but tonight we can reveal that at the moment the Australian
00:36Navy has just one fully operational Collins-class submarine.
00:43We do also know that Defence has worked on contingencies and if required it could put
00:49another boat to sea if it was urgently needed, but at this point it looks like the submarine
00:55availability has been extremely limited and that there is only one submarine currently
01:02fully operational.
01:04And what's Defence had to say?
01:06Well in a statement tonight Defence tells us that it continues to quote meet government
01:12directed levels of operational capability for the Collins-class submarines.
01:17It also says that it has more than one boat available for operations if required and I
01:24think that that is the key point of that statement, that it ideally wouldn't want
01:28to put a second of its Collins-class submarines to sea at the moment.
01:34I understand that that boat that could be put to sea is still awaiting final certification
01:41after receiving some upgrades or some repair work in Western Australia.
01:47So at the moment we know that two of our Collins-class submarines are at the Osborne shipyard in
01:54Adelaide where they undergo extensive maintenance known as full cycle docking.
02:00It's also known that there's been some industrial action at that shipyard recently which has
02:04caused delays to that maintenance known as full cycle dockings, but at present we do
02:11have one submarine that is fully operational.
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